武威漢簡‧甲本士相見之禮

Wǔwēi Hàn Jiǎn‧Jiǎ Běn Shì Xiāng Jiàn Zhī Lǐ 武威漢簡‧甲本士相見之禮

Wuwei Han Bamboo Slips — Version A: Ritual of the Officer’s Formal Meeting

Excavated text; no attributed author.

About the work

This text is the transcription (shìwén 釋文) of Version A (甲本 jiǎ běn) of the Shì xiāng jiàn lǐ 士相見禮 chapter of the Yílǐ 儀禮 (Ceremonial and Ritual) as preserved on bamboo and wooden slips excavated in 1959 from tomb 6 at Mózuǐzǐ 磨嘴子, Wūwēi 武威, Gānsù. The final colophon slip records the chapter length as 凡千二十字 (“a total of one thousand and twenty characters”). This is one of the most complete individual chapters in the Wuwei Yili find.

Abstract

The Wuwei Han bamboo slips (Wǔwēi Hànjian 武威漢簡) were excavated from tomb 6 at Mózuǐzǐ 磨嘴子, Wūwēi county 武威縣 (present-day Gānsù province), in 1959. The tomb has been dated to the reign of Wang Mang 王莽 (9–23 CE) or slightly earlier in the Former Han period, sealed no later than 23 CE. The find comprised 469 bamboo and wooden slips (total c. 370 slips bearing text, approximately 20,000 characters) constituting multiple manuscript copies of chapters from the Yílǐ 儀禮, together with miscellaneous wooden slips (see KR2p0109). The find was first reported in Kǎogǔ 考古 1960.5 and 1960.8 and subsequently published in the standard edition: 陳夢家 Chén Mèngjiā, ed., 《武威漢簡》, 文物出版社, 1964 (reprinted with a new study by Chén Mèngjiā, 中華書局, 2005).

This entry (KR2p0101) covers the Shì xiāng jiàn lǐ 士相見禮 (“Ritual of the Officer’s Formal Meeting”) chapter, Version A (甲本). The Shì xiāng jiàn lǐ governs the ceremonial procedure for officers of the shì 士 rank when meeting one another for the first time: the presentation of gifts (zhì 墊, a pheasant in winter or a grouse in summer), the elaborate three-stage exchange of polite refusals and insistences before the guest is admitted, then the correct deportment during the audience itself. The text opens: 士相見之禮：[墊，] 冬用雉，夏用居 — “The ritual of officers meeting: In winter use a pheasant; in summer use a 居 [grouse].” (The graph 居 for the bird 雎鳩 is a manuscript variant.) The chapter closes with rules on how to address superiors of different ranks (the ruler, great officers, elders, young men, commoners) and correct comportment during a seated audience, and ends with the colophon counting 凡千二十字.

The Wuwei Version A shows numerous textual variants when compared with the received Yili as transmitted in the Shísān jīng zhùshū 十三經注疏 (Commentaries and Sub-commentaries on the Thirteen Classics). These variants have been the subject of ongoing philological analysis since the 1960s. Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, §59.7.2, III #2) notes that the Wuwei Yili text is “slightly different from the received version.”

The Yílǐ itself is conventionally attributed to the Duke of Zhou 周公 or, in later tradition, associated with Confucius’s disciple Zǐxià 子夏 (Bǔ Shāng 卜商), but it is a pre-Qin ritual manual of uncertain authorship and date; the Wuwei slips preserve a Former Han manuscript copy made not later than the early first century CE. The Shì xiāng jiàn lǐ is chapter 3 of the received 17-chapter Yili.

Translations and research

• Steele, John, tr. The I-li, or Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial. 2 vols. Probsthain, 1917. Standard English translation of the received Yili text; covers this chapter in vol. 1.
• 陳夢家 Chén Mèngjiā, ed. 《武威漢簡》. 文物出版社, 1964; repr. 中華書局, 2005. Editio princeps with transcription, commentary, and plates.
• Loewe, Michael. “I-li.” In Michael Loewe, ed. Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. SSEC/IEAS, 1993, pp. 234–43. Bibliographic overview of the received Yili and excavated versions.
• Boltz, William G. “Yili.” In Loewe, ed. Early Chinese Texts, pp. 234–43.

Links

• Wuwei Han bamboo slips — Wikipedia
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §59.7.2 (III Wuwei, #2) — overview of the Mozuizi excavation and Yili slips.